36 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. Why do players want so many new maps? Yes, they are technically speaking, new content but they play the same. GO LEFT and GO LEFT FAST! or, run to the center and hide behind cover, occasionally ducking out to fire your lasers/autocannons/missiles*.

I'd like an Urban style map, and maybe a few other new maps which WOULD add variety but given their cost and PGI's limited finances, are they really a good investment? To anybody who claims that we aren't getting new content, the Skill Tree (mediocre™ as it may be), New Tech, etc ARE coming out in the new few months. Maybe with IK.

*LRM carriers don't need to duck out of cover to fire at the enemy, but they will demand locks from those who do.

[El Bandito]

A lot of the new tech is basically rehash of the old ones. They are easy to program, as the base codes are there already, and require mostly new sound effects and new look. It shouldn't take away too much time from developers.

As for the necessity of new maps, I do believe that we are in due for a new QP map. Current selection is getting stale, in part due to map voting system + Escort mode bias. Removing map voting can both help and harm game enjoyment for players. Just make a map that has clear day (without daylight cycle BS), has open space on some parts, less vegetation and pebbles to get in the way, and not too hot, and it is already a formula for popular map.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 April 2017 - 10:04 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Its not about the amount of maps, its about diversity of said maps. We used to have brawl-oriented maps with minimal open space such as old RiverCity and FrozenCity, we used to have open maps with no cover like old Caustic. PGI "improved" all those maps so that they are exact same as all other maps. The idea of a "balanced" map is dumb, maps must be different. So we do need more maps that are different.

[Amsro]

This idea that maps cost a large amount of money is a joke.

Should have a large amount of maps already, I think the main problem lies in whatever PGI has done to it's version of cryengine.

Maybe when the MW5 game engine upgrade happens the inflow of new content will arrive.

[Khobai]

We need bigger maps so scouting can actually be a thing.

When you find the enemy in the first 20 seconds of the game, thats not scouting.

[Lykaon]

Khobai, on 04 April 2017 - 10:13 AM, said:

We need bigger maps so scouting can actually be a thing.

When you find the enemy in the first 20 seconds of the game, thats not scouting.

How do you not now where they are at the very start? The spawn points are always the same for a map+ mode. You can even see their dropships take off.

The problem is fixed spawns AND small maps.

Fixed spawns means we always know where everybody starts on the map.

Small maps means that after players leave their predicable starting points the variables for guessing where they will go is limited by fewer options available.

There are some maps that have taken this to such an extreme example that the options for movement are literally gated Like HPG and Canyon (also both very small maps canyon for actually being small and HPG for only having one third of the map ever used)

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Khobai, on 04 April 2017 - 10:13 AM, said:

We need bigger maps so scouting can actually be a thing.

When you find the enemy in the first 20 seconds of the game, thats not scouting.

Plsno

People play this game to shoot stompy robots, not to walk around playing hide and seek for 2 minutes before they can actually do what they signed up to do.

We already have a boatload of large maps such as polar, frozen city, forest colony, caustic valley, and more. We really need some more brawling focused maps since they've all been removed except for Mining Collective and that rarely comes up since that escort mode keeps blocking all the good maps.

[Mystere]

Dakota1000, on 04 April 2017 - 10:33 AM, said:

People play this game to shoot stompy robots, not to walk around playing hide and seek for 2 minutes before they can actually do what they signed up to do.

Hmm! I don't seem to recall players in War Thunder complaining about flying long distances, sometimes within cloud cover to avoid enemy detection. And they have much more people playing in a day than people playing MWO in a month.

Edited by Mystere, 04 April 2017 - 10:46 AM.

[NextGame]

cazidin, on 04 April 2017 - 09:43 AM, said:

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. Why do players want so many new maps? Yes, they are technically speaking, new content but they play the same. GO LEFT and GO LEFT FAST! or, run to the center and hide behind cover, occasionally ducking out to fire your lasers/autocannons/missiles*.

I'd like an Urban style map, and maybe a few other new maps which WOULD add variety but given their cost and PGI's limited finances, are they really a good investment? To anybody who claims that we aren't getting new content, the Skill Tree (mediocre™ as it may be), New Tech, etc ARE coming out in the new few months. Maybe with IK.

*LRM carriers don't need to duck out of cover to fire at the enemy, but they will demand locks from those who do.

this game needs any and all non mechpack content desperately

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Mystere, on 04 April 2017 - 10:44 AM, said:

Hmm! I don't seem to recall players in War Thunder complaining about flying long distances, sometimes within cloud cover to avoid enemy detection. And they have much more people playing in a day than people playing MWO in a month.

Maybe all the people who wanted scouting played WT and the people who don't want to deal with that played MWO.

[Mystere]

Dakota1000, on 04 April 2017 - 10:48 AM, said:

Maybe all the people who wanted scouting played WT and the people who don't want to deal with that played MWO.

OMFG! If that's true, that's a whole lot of lost players!

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Mystere, on 04 April 2017 - 10:53 AM, said:

OMFG! If that's true, that's a whole lot of lost players!

Niche gaming in a nutshell.

[cazidin]

El Bandito, on 04 April 2017 - 09:53 AM, said:

A lot of the new tech is basically rehash of the old ones. They are easy to program, as the base codes are there already, and require mostly new sound effects and new look. It shouldn't take away too much time from developers.

As for the necessity of new maps, I do believe that we are in due for a new QP map. Current selection is getting stale, in part due to map voting system + Escort mode bias. Removing map voting can both help and harm game enjoyment for players. Just make a map that has clear day (without daylight cycle BS), has open space on some parts, less vegetation and pebbles to get in the way, and not too hot, and it is already a formula for popular map.

While it may appear easy, PGI still has to model these new weapons (even if their just slight modifications on existing models), program them in (with their mix of frankencode and having a single programmer and twenty artists, and Tina) even simple stuff like that can take weeks. That's why Triple A dev teams have so many programmers, developers, and 15 minute long credit rolls.

I agree that we ARE due for a new map. My question more accurately asks "Can we expect anything significantly different from what we already got?" Polar Highlands is new, it's a solid map if you bring LRMs, but it's not very good for brawls in most QP matches. New maps will be cool for a few weeks, but then it gets "stale" again. How many maps do we need to prevent that, or, what changes to the map selection tool can we make to keep things fresh and challenging?

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Maps are done by different people than those who work on mechs. We really should get a new map every quarter with PGI having I think now 3 dedicated map making teams now for MWO. I get they have been working on balancing the new modes on old maps, totally understandable. But, at the same time, that should have eaten one team's time. We should have still seen one map coming with Incursion as well as escort. Hell, with every new mode PGI should put in a new map to show off the new mode and how it should work because it is the best way to show it off. Grim was to show off domination (though most say it is a horrible map for domination, I disagree but that is a different argument) and Grim is a decent map for most modes. We didn't get a new map for Escort, which would have been a great mode to dump a dense urban map on us, or a map full of canyons and rough terrain. Incursion could have given us another new map to show off the mode as well with more destructible terrain to go with the destructible walls and what not.

We need new maps due to the ones we have are stale, we also need something to fix the rotation so what maps show up to be picked are more mixed up so we see hopefully 6 different maps in a given hour (with an average of 6 matches an hour). I am fine with it taking PGI a while to get to more maps, but, they need to be in the pipeline and I would like PGI to put out a statement about more maps coming.

[0111101]

cazidin, on 04 April 2017 - 09:43 AM, said:

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. Why do players want so many new maps? Yes, they are technically speaking, new content but they play the same. GO LEFT and GO LEFT FAST! or, run to the center and hide behind cover, occasionally ducking out to fire your lasers/autocannons/missiles*.

I'd like an Urban style map, and maybe a few other new maps which WOULD add variety but given their cost and PGI's limited finances, are they really a good investment? To anybody who claims that we aren't getting new content, the Skill Tree (mediocre™ as it may be), New Tech, etc ARE coming out in the new few months. Maybe with IK.

*LRM carriers don't need to duck out of cover to fire at the enemy, but they will demand locks from those who do.

The map strats boiling down to "go left and go left fast! Or run to the center and hide behind cover" in quick play falls on the design of the maps. Better design allows for more viable options.

We'd all like a real urban map. Frozen "City" is almost two halves of one, separated by a massive valley. River "City" is two quarters of one, separated by a large river and hemmed in by mountains to the north and ocean to the south. Crimson Strait has a nice city-esque layout but is nowhere close to a true urban sprawl.

Edit: almost forgot my sassy quotation marks around River "City".

Edited by 0111101, 04 April 2017 - 12:12 PM.

[Suko]

cazidin, on 04 April 2017 - 09:43 AM, said:

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. Why do players want so many new maps? Yes, they are technically speaking, new content but they play the same. GO LEFT and GO LEFT FAST! or, run to the center and hide behind cover, occasionally ducking out to fire your lasers/autocannons/missiles*.

I'd like an Urban style map, and maybe a few other new maps which WOULD add variety but given their cost and PGI's limited finances, are they really a good investment? To anybody who claims that we aren't getting new content, the Skill Tree (mediocre™ as it may be), New Tech, etc ARE coming out in the new few months. Maybe with IK.

*LRM carriers don't need to duck out of cover to fire at the enemy, but they will demand locks from those who do.

Do you wear the same set of clothes for years on end? I hope the answer is "no". You don't NEED multiple pairs of pants, but it's nice to have some variety to life. Maps are the same thing. We haven't had a NEW map (not a rehash) in ages. It's almost been a year since we got Polar Highlands and that started out as a refresh to Alpine.

Regardless, new maps ARE a necessity. I personally don't care if they "play" different from existing maps. I just want to have something new to stare at. Others have recommended doing something like take Polar Highlands, but make it a temperate climate and add some small groves of trees and water features. It might be neat if PGI looked at some of the old Board Game maps and used them as "inspiration" for new maps.


(I want a map that feels like this. That would be nice.)

Amsro, on 04 April 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

This idea that maps cost a large amount of money is a joke.

Should have a large amount of maps already, I think the main problem lies in whatever PGI has done to it's version of cryengine.

Maybe when the MW5 game engine upgrade happens the inflow of new content will arrive.

The problem is that PGI isn't profiting from maps.
.....
Want another mechpack?

Edited by Suko, 04 April 2017 - 12:25 PM.

[Clanner Scum]

I'd like a rocky lunar map.

[HGAK47]

All I am saying..... the old frozen city was a lot more fun than the version we have now.

Sometimes the way a map is laid out can make a huge difference in how it feels to play and frozen city is a prime example in my opnion.

[Mystere]

HGAK47, on 04 April 2017 - 02:12 PM, said:

All I am saying..... the old frozen city was a lot more fun than the version we have now.

Sometimes the way a map is laid out can make a huge difference in how it feels to play and frozen city is a prime example in my opnion.

Unfortunately, on one hand, a large chunk of the player base has this knee-jerk tendency to loudly demand the complete and immediate removal of things they do not like.

On the other, for some unspecified reason, PGI seems to have a "technically-related" problem of taking an existing map, modifying it, and adding it as a new map. I cannot find that post from PGI that hinted as much.

[Kanil]

Clanner Scum, on 04 April 2017 - 12:30 PM, said:

I'd like a rocky lunar map.

HPG without the HPG? Sounds nice.